“Yeah, and?”
“And what if I’m not like you guys?” The words fell out before I could stop them. I backtracked. “I mean, what if I don’t . . . fit?”
Nihal looked at me curiously for a second and said, “Julian, last year we only had two rooks: me and Jon Cox.” He raised his eyebrows. “Jon Cox, the most archetypical Kensington kid in the history of Kensington kids. And then me.”
He went back to paging through the music, still unhurried, serene. “I worried about what it’d be like in the Sharps. If I’d get staring, or weird questions, or the feeling that . . .” He switched folders. “But it wasn’t like that.”
“Why?” I said.
“I suppose it’s the work, right? It has to be.” He shrugged. “You can be weird. You can be a frickin’ furry, for all the guys care. We’re just trying to make something.”
I looked back down at the folders. Weird, sure. But would they be as forgiving of a girl? Someone who broke their circle of brotherhood, or all-male back-patting, or whatever it was at heart?
“Thanks, man,” I mumbled, nearing the middle of the folder.
“Sure.”
“Also, why do you call Mama Theodore?” I asked.
“Because he asked me to.”
“Oh.”
“Found it,” he said, plucking a stapled piece of music from his folder.
The archives went back in the cabinet, and Nihal shut off the lights when we left.
“—But it was just one kiss. She won’t make it a big thing. Right?”
“I don’t know, Jenna,” I said, lying back on my bed, wrapped in a towel. “I feel like if you kissed her, it’s your job to make it ‘not a big thing.’”
“Yeah, well. She kissed me back.” I heard cars rush by in the background. Jenna was the only one of my friends from home who actually called, instead of texting or Snapping, and she only ever called when she was walking home from school. People were slightly less likely to say shit to you on the street if you were on the phone, and Jenna had it rough with catcallers. You could see the girl’s curves from three blocks away no matter how shapeless her outfit was.
“Still,” I said. “You kissed her first, right?”
“I guess . . .”
Something unsaid lurked in the pause. I grinned. “You liiike her, don’t you?”
Jenna let out a jumbled stream of embarrassed-sounding consonants. “Forget it! Whatever. I’ll figure it out.” A car horn beeped in the background, a male voice yelled something indistinguishable, and Jenna’s yell came through, muffled: “Grow up!”
I smiled. “Okay, well, keep me in the loop.”
“Are you sick?” she asked.
“What?”
“Your voice sounds kind of weird.”
I cleared my throat, lifting my voice. “Oh, yeah, I’m kind of getting over a cold.” I had to be more careful—I kept slipping, speaking in Julian’s voice during classes by mistake.
“Aw, okay, get some rest,” Jenna said. “Talk later?”
“Later.”
“Love you!” she sang, and hung up.
I rolled off my bed, adjusting my towel. These days, I’d been showering infrequently enough to disgust even myself. A bit of a journey separated my room and the bathrooms, and where I was going, my wig could not follow. That chamber of pure humidity would have made it soggy and sad for the rest of its lifespan. Burgess’s floor plan didn’t exactly help, with its seemingly random map of twists and turns. You never knew who was waiting around the corner, waiting to discover you wigless.
Shower caddy swinging from my right hand, I cracked my door and peered out.
All clear. I dashed forward, flip-flops clapping between the teal carpet and my heels. I stopped at the corner, peered around it to make sure the next stretch was clear, and accelerated back into a run. The decorations on doors flapped in my wake.
I slowed at the water fountain, tight grip on my caddy. One last turn.
As I peered around the final corner, Katie Woods shouldered through the bathroom door, looking down at her phone. I whipped out of sight. She was heading right for me. There was no time to make it down the hall—I only had seconds.
My eyes lit on the door labeled TRASH to my left. I barged in. My momentum brought me crashing into the unforgiving edge of the wooden trash container, which held a heaping tower of knotted white bags. I lost my balance, my arm flew up, and my caddy sailed into the infinite depths of trash mountain.
The door clicked shut behind me. As I breathed in, the foulest of stenches washed through my nostrils, so strong I tasted it. I gagged. What the fuck? What were people putting in their trash-cans, sacks of rotting produce? Literal feces?
Trying not to breathe, I extracted my caddy, which had landed between two bags, one seeping a horrible liquid. My shampoo had escaped, sliding all the way to the back, near the wall. I reached up with both hands, one for levering bags out of the way and the other for shampoo retrieval, which meant dropping my towel, and that was how I found myself naked in the trash closet digging through the garbage like a sad hairless raccoon.
My fingers collided with smooth plastic. I tossed the shampoo bottle into my caddy and snatched up my towel. I fled my garbage realm and dashed into the shower without a look back.
Disguised, vigorously cleansed, and out of Burgess, I headed for the dining hall. I was breathless, having left the quad as fast as possible, as usual.
My phone buzzed. I unlocked it to find a text from my mom:
Hi sweety . Good news and bad news . Bad news first, I was late to a shift so , Pattons said that was my 3rd strike . But good news, we r approved for calfresh ! Ebt card came today . Hope everything is good w u .
I stopped dead on the sidewalk, my breathlessness switching registers. Bewilderment washed cold down my back.
She’d said it so casually, as if this were the last in a long line of messages about losing jobs and reapplying for benefits. Like this wasn’t completely out of the blue.
It was so typical of my parents, not telling me anything until it was so late in the day that my opinion felt totally irrelevant. What should I say? Did it even matter?
I forced myself to start walking again, past the hulking film dorm, up toward the picturesque colonial houses.
Why didn’t you tell me you were applying? I texted back.